Opening a second location can bring a surge of paperwork. The Den, a Denver social club for parents and children, says ChatGPT Work helped its small team prepare licensing and grant materials faster—but staff still review outputs and make final decisions.
In OpenAI’s account of The Den, the company says the team used ChatGPT Work with Gmail, Slack and Google Drive plugins to gather and analyze information from across the business and propose next steps. During a liquor-license application, an earlier hearing slot became available; The Den says it used the tool to assemble documents, identify missing items and convert files to required formats. Founder and CEO Chandler Lipe said work that would have taken four days was condensed into three hours of team review and completion.
Use AI to Organize, Not Approve
The account reports that grant applications now take two hours instead of three days. OpenAI also reports that The Den’s leadership team saves 10–15 hours a week. Those are results attributed to the company’s own customer story, not independent benchmarks. The account does not say the tool won grants or secured a liquor license.
The practical distinction is important: The Den describes AI-assisted preparation, followed by human checking and decisions. Its example may be useful if your team has information spread across files and a defined application process, but it does not show that the same time savings will apply elsewhere.
The club also uses ChatGPT to explore questions before group discussion. Its head of programming and partnerships shared context about successful and unsuccessful partnerships to develop a proposed structure for leadership review. The general manager used financial reports, sales data and inventory information to create a more digestible business view for forecasting and operational planning.
OpenAI says Lipe is starting to use ChatGPT Voice to draft emails, capture meeting follow-ups and organize ideas while traveling. These are described as uses she can review before sending or acting on them—not autonomous actions.
Try a Small, Checkable Task
If your team is considering a similar workflow, start with one recurring paperwork task that has a clear checklist. Provide relevant source material, ask the tool to organize it and flag gaps, then compare its output with the original records. Include review and correction time when assessing whether the process is worthwhile. The Den’s account does not provide pricing or a detailed accuracy assessment, so it cannot answer those questions for your business.
The Den plans to explore Codex for possible custom systems, including a member app, connections between point-of-sale systems and Slack alerts across locations. Those are future plans, not features the account says are already live.
Which recurring paperwork task in your organization would be easiest to test with human review?
Source image: OpenAI.